Her Closest Friend (ARC)

by Clare Boyd

  The timer for the biscuits, which she and Dylan had baked together, pinged. She had already been to the farm shop to buy some other house-warming goodies for the Etheringtons. Despite her misgivings about their arrival, she ploughed on, reminding herself of the bigger, better picture, elbowing the doubt out of her mind. She remained committed to the dream, single-mindedly refusing to let anything derail her plans.

  As soon as the removals men had driven away, she wrapped the cooled biscuits into a cellophane parcel with ribbon and nestled them into a gift basket next to the punnet of strawberries and bottle of Prosecco.

  Armed with her gift, she went to find Dylan, who was messing around in the garage. Frequently, these days, Dylan played with his cuddly toys or games in the Giulia. Once, Sophie had discovered him there after his lights-out. Apparently, he had snuck past her while she had been watching television and had nipped out of the back door in his slippers. The magnetism of the Giulia was spilling down through the generations, which both delighted and worried Sophie in equal measure. But she had not discouraged him. If the car could not be driven and shared with the world, at least Dylan could enjoy it. His grandfather would approve of that, and she hoped the Etheringtons wouldn’t mind. They had been warned that their silver Prius would not find a home in the garage.

  ‘Dylan! Dylan! Come on, I want you to come with me to welcome the Etheringtons!’ she called out into the garage.

  She heard a noise from the back of the car. ‘Dylan?’

  The boot sprang open. ‘Coming,’ Dylan said, climbing out.

  ‘How did you close the boot?’

  ‘It wasn’t closed.’

  Intrigued, Sophie scooted round to see. He had twisted a piece of green string around the silver boot catch, levering it closed. Sophie was impressed by his ingenuity.

  But she said, ‘Don’t do that, Dylan, that’s dangerous.’

  ‘I like it dark.’

  ‘But imagine if you got stuck in there.’

  ‘You’d get me out.’

  ‘Fine,’ Sophie laughed. ‘Come on, then.’

  Sophie, with Dylan by her side, knocked on the cottage door and waited for its new custodians to appear. The basket obscured Dylan’s head.

  Mrs Martha Etherington answered, smiling on the doorstep of her new home, blinking into the sunlight.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Etherington, I just thought we’d drop this by to welcome you,’ Sophie said.

  Dylan shoved the basket at her as though throwing a basketball and then he darted off back home. She and Martha laughed.

  ‘Oh, thank you! How lovely. You shouldn’t have,’ she said, admiring the gift before putting it down by her feet and shooting her hand out to shake Sophie’s, crunching her bones slightly.

  She was wearing a cotton tank top, showing a solid, muscular frame. Her face was just as bold and healthy, with a helmet of white hair, centrally parted and bluntly cut to the tips of each ear.

  ‘Please, call me Martha.’

  ‘If there’s anything you need, just pop over to my little shack and knock on the door. Any time.’

  Sophie was waiting to be asked in, keen to inspect the house and to check that they were being respectful of Deda’s home, that they were worthy of it.

  ‘That is very kind, Sophie. I will,’ she said, wiping the back of her hand over her forehead. ‘When we’ve done with this awful unpacking business, we might well realise we’ve forgotten the sugar or something.’

  Poised to push past her, Sophie said, ‘Do you need any help unpacking?’

  ‘No, no. We’re getting along nicely, thank you. Kenneth’s busy doing upstairs.’

  Sophie thought it rude that she was not being invited in, that Kenneth did not come downstairs to say hello to his new landlady.

  ‘Oh, that reminds me,’ Sophie said, concocting a cleverer way of getting in. ‘I wanted to show you where the stopcock is, for the water.’

  ‘Just tell me, I’m sure I’ll be able to find it myself.’

  ‘It’s awkward to get at. I’d better show you.’

  There was a little twitch of Martha’s right cheek that did not turn into a smile.

  ‘Come on in. Please excuse the chaos.’

  ‘It’s upstairs,’ Sophie said, walking slowly across the threshold, holding her breath, wishing the walls were bare again, wishing to see Deda’s chair in the front room.

  Already, there was a series of three African masks, with slits as eyes, lined up on the left-hand wall. At the foot of the stairs sat a stuffed, rag-cloth elephant with mirrored circles stitched into its pink material. Deda would have thought it absurd.

  Upstairs, cluttering the floor beside a large empty bookshelf were stacks of books, glossy photographic hardcovers on top of well-thumbed paperbacks, all of them about to topple. They had to inch around them to get into the bathroom.

  ‘My books are the first to be unpacked, always,’ Martha explained, and then she called out towards Deda’s bedroom, ‘Ken? Ken!’

  There was no reply. Was he deaf?

  Sophie knelt down on the tiles and pulled the panelling from the side of the bath to reveal the stopcock. ‘You have to hook your fingers into that little gap, see?’

  ‘Ah, thank you, yes, I wouldn’t have been able to find that myself.’

  ‘No problem,’ Sophie said, eyeing the beard clippers on the edge of the sink and the grubby purple washbag next to it. Their creams and lotions along the small alcove windowsill were in reds and pinks, fruity and organic, and smelt wrong in there. Sophie’s eyes stung with that acidic smell. Long gone was the old-fashioned woody tang of Deda’s shaving-soap dish.

  Before heading downstairs, Sophie stopped on the landing, looked at her old bedroom door, contemplated its emptiness, dragged her eyes away from it and said, ‘One thing I forgot to mention: the window latch in the main bedroom is stiff. I’ll show you how to close it properly. For security reasons.’

  Without waiting for permission to go into Deda’s bedroom – she owned the house, after all – she barged in. There, lying on the double bed, where her grandfather’s body had been, was Kenneth, whose ears were covered in large red headphones. His eyes were closed, his feet were jiggling to the beat and his hands tapped an imaginary drum in the air.

  Martha laughed, went over to him and pinged one headphone, ‘Busy, are we?’

  He sprang up, yanked his headphones off and reached down for his iPhone, which dangled at his knees, having fallen from the pocket of his corduroy trousers. ‘How embarrassing,’ he chortled, pressing at the screen, scratching at his thick white beard.

  ‘This is Sophie. Our landlady, remember?’ Martha grinned.

  Composing himself, he said, ‘Hello, Sophie, yes, we’ve met, my apologies, I was so hard at work I didn’t hear you come in.’

  Martha and Kenneth laughed. Sophie should have laughed with them. She could not. Her heart had stopped at the very moment she had seen him lying there, where Deda had once lain dead. It should have been Deda in this room. Alive. Not this impostor, casually listening to music and dancing in this sacred space. Were they going to have sex in here, too? The thought sickened her. She wanted to shove them both out and kick them back into their electric Prius.

  When she had first met them, briefly, with the estate agent, they had been like ciphers, nondescript old people, meek and without personalities. She had not predicted the extent to which their presence here would feel wrong, violently wrong. Here, as they settled in, jamming the rooms with their lives, opening up boxes full of colour and exoticism, they seemed to be changing the vibration in the air left by Deda’s memory. There was not enough space for him and them. These people came with an energy of their own that might silence Deda’s voice in this house forever.

  She could have said something, she could have told them to get out. She could have.

  A wail from Dylan cut in, disturbing what could have been.

  Sophie bolted from the room and charged downstairs.

  Dylan was on the doorstep, alwa
ys reluctant to come inside, bent over, pressing his hands down on his foot.

  ‘It hurts, Mumma!’

  ‘Oh my god! What happened?’ Sophie cried.

  ‘The axe fell on it, you idiot!’ Dylan screamed back at her, but Sophie could see there was no blood.

  As she carried him back to the shack, he wept on her shoulder and pounded at her back. Martha’s voice was behind her, asking her if he was all right. Her heart beat fast. If she had turned around to reply, she would have told her it was her fault that Dylan was hurt. Instead, she ignored her.

  On the sofa, inside, she made sure that Dylan could move his toe and rubbed arnica cream on the reddened patch. ‘It’s probably just a bruise,’ she exhaled, relieved, wondering if she should make the trip to A&E anyway, as a caution. ‘I’m putting that horrible thing away, okay, poppet?’

  He nodded, licking a lolly she had given him, peering over her shoulder to watch a cartoon on the television. The path of a tear was still visible down his dusty skin, but it was clear there was no pain as she gently wiggled his toes.

  ‘Can I play Fortnite, Mumma?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, kissing him, leaving him to rest on the sofa, lighting some incense, returning to the window to look out at the cottage.

  The door was closed. The windows were dark. There was a shadowy movement upstairs in the bedroom window. She brought her binoculars to her eyes and watched, waiting for the dusk to creep through the trees, to infiltrate their little enclave in the woods and shroud the cottage in darkness.

  A missing toe, some sliced-off flesh, a deformed child. All of it had been possible. All because she had been distracted by those housebreakers. Another omen.

  The lights were turned on. It seemed true to type that Martha would not close the curtains. She was the sort of woman to stroll around stark naked. Now, she was downstairs in the kitchen, fully dressed, filling the two small cupboards with food. Packets of brown rice and lentils; cans of chickpeas and chopped tomatoes. At one point the woman sneezed, and brought out a white cloth hanky from her pocket to blow her nose.

  Sophie pointed her binoculars at the central window above the front door, where she could see that the books were slotted into the bookshelf already. Finally, she moved her binoculars downstairs, to see into the windows of the sitting room. Kenneth was lounging on the coral sofa that Sophie had placed by the bar heater; the sofa she dreamt of sitting in one day, with tea, with Naomi. A flicker from a television screen illuminated his face. He laughed at something and scratched his beard, then reached for a glass on the side table. Deda’s side table. He sipped from the glass, which was most probably beer, and rested it on his belly.

  How comfortable he looked, how entitled.

  Deda would be rolling in his grave at the notion of this trespasser. Sophie had to get them out. She couldn’t wait any longer to live there. Then she thought of the rent dropping into her account every month. She and Dylan needed an income. Adam had become unreliable as a provider. Only twelve days after moving out, he was whingeing about buying new trainers for Dylan, he was begrudgingly increasing her food shopping budget by a measly five pounds, he was late to pay the utility bills and refusing to pay for a private clinic appointment for Dylan’s eczema.

  She needed a job.

  The only other single mother in Dylan’s class at school had two jobs to make ends meet. She worked as a receptionist at a local graphic design firm in the daytime, and two nights a week she worked as a carer at an old people’s home, relying on her mother to babysit for their three children. She looked permanently shattered and harassed. The married mothers talked of how much they admired her, but Sophie pitied her. She did not want that life.

  A deep well of insecurity was stirred in her when she thought of finding herself a job. Before becoming a mother, her previous temping jobs had not paid well, nor had they lasted for long. After six months as a waitress in a chain brasserie, she had suffered regular panic attacks on the late drive home. At the bookshop, she had a bout of severe claustrophobia in the basement storeroom and quit. During her time at the boutique dress shop, under the aegis of a controlling manager, she had experienced low moods and rapid weight loss, which had worried Adam enough to ask her to hand in her notice. Soon, she had stopped pretending to look for a new job and Adam had accepted that he would support her.

  The jobs that she was faced with now, squeezed within school hours, would be worse than the work she had hated so much back then.

  After some time thinking, another idea took shape in her head.

  Perhaps she still needed Naomi after all.

  She texted her:

  Hi Naomi – Trip out in the Giulia was great fun. Your worrying gets you nowhere! Just wondering if I could pop by for a cuppa? Have something to discuss. Big hug, Sophie xx

  Through the narrow opening of the Wilsons’ front door, Sophie could see only a slither of Naomi. Her arm was wrapped around the bulge of her stomach. A few drops of dried red-brown liquid were splattered on the hem of her nightie; blood, perhaps, but more likely to be red wine.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Naomi spat.

  It was clear to Sophie that she was cross about Brighton, and the trip out in the Giulia.

  ‘Didn’t you get my text?’

  ‘I got your text, and I do not want to discuss anything with you.’

  ‘I brought you a frothy coffee.’ Sophie pushed a steaming hot cup through the gap, under the security chain.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ she said, wide-eyed, and then looked down at the cup she had taken, as though she was surprised it was in her hand. She frowned, and shoved it back through.

  Sophie let the coffee cup hang in the air between them.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Sophie twisted her hair down around her right shoulder, feeling bashful about what she had come to propose. She looked down at her feet, seeing that the frayed edges of her bell-bottom jeans covered the tips of her trainers, like a child’s. She felt like a child who was about to ask for a biscuit they knew they weren’t allowed.

  ‘I told you, I have nothing to discuss with you.’

  She sounded aggressive, brave, but Sophie thought she detected something else in her eyes. Wariness, perhaps. Or was it fear?

  ‘We can’t talk about it on the doorstep.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about anything,’ Naomi whispered hoarsely, looking over Sophie’s shoulder shiftily. A second later, she slammed the front door in Sophie’s face.

  Sophie tightened the thin belt looped through her jeans waistband, just by a notch, enjoying the loss of breath. Then she pressed both palms, and her right ear, up to the glossy painted door panel, feeling the vibrations on her cheek of the locks being secured on the other side. Sophie spoke, loudly, hoping Naomi would hear. ‘I don’t think it would be wise if we shout about this through the door, do you? But I’ll start telling you now, if you’d prefer.’

  The door unlocked again. ‘Keep your voice down!’

  Storming away, she let the door fly wide open.

  Sophie hesitated on the threshold, considering Naomi’s tetchy mood, doubting, for a moment, whether this was the right time to broach such an important subject. Her right palm became itchy. Deciding that there might never be a good time, she entered the house.

  The bifold doors in the kitchen were open. The coffee had been poured down the sink. There were three ready-rolled cigarettes lying on the counter. Charlie wouldn’t like that.

  Outside, on the two-seater bench, Naomi sat, round-shouldered, weighed down by a woollen peacoat that would be too warm for the May day. She was smoking, stroking Harley’s head.

  Harley left Naomi’s side to scamper up to Sophie, yapping at her, wagging his tail.

  ‘Hello, you,’ Sophie cooed, grateful that he seemed pleased to see her even if Naomi was not.

  Sophie sat down next to Naomi. Naomi stood up, but did not walk away. Harley began charging between them, sitting at Naomi’s feet for a second, springin
g up again, back to Sophie, and so on.

  ‘My new tenants moved in last Saturday.’

  Silence.

  ‘They seem nice.’

  More silence. Small talk was a waste of time. She decided to get on with it.

  ‘I have come to discuss a business idea,’ Sophie began.

  At this point, Harley ran off.

  Naomi took a long drag from her roll-up. Sophie continued, ‘I was thinking we could become partners.’

  Naomi flicked her half-smoked cigarette onto the ground, laughing, stamping at the butt. ‘Partners in what?’

  ‘Your blog.’

  ‘You really are fucking delusional,’ she muttered, shaking her head.

  Sophie ignored that. ‘I know it doesn’t make an awful lot of money, but I don’t need to make much.’

  ‘But you don’t know anything about wine.’

  ‘I know a bit, through you. I could be a silent partner with a fifty per cent stake. Perhaps add my name to your limited company. King and Wilson? It has a nice ring to it.’

  ‘Were you planning to give me any money for the privilege?’ she retorted sarcastically.

  ‘I don’t have any, you know that.’

  ‘So, you have no money, you can’t write and you know shit about wine. Why the hell would I sign half of my business over to you?’

  ‘I could learn.’

  ‘Not a chance in hell.’